Skype, Sony Working to Offer On-Demand iTunes Rivals

The field of on-demand video services continues to grow. Both Sony and Skype have announced their intentions to challenge the dominance of iTunes via download services. Sony is going to be offering movie downloads via the PSP, no doubt as a partial rebuff to Microsoft's entry into the field. Meanwhile, Skype is planning to roll out a broadband television service they are calling 'the Venice Project'. Funded with the money made when Skype was sold to eBay, the beta version was apparently launched last week. From the article: "On his blog, Mr Friis said the partners had been 'quietly testing with a small circle of people' for a few months, and that they would now expand the circle. The service will offer high-quality programs through an ad-supported platform. The project aims to bring quality TV programs free to consumers who have a broadband internet connection, the spokesman said."

Sony No, Skype yes.

While I couldn't care less about Sony's offering, Skype's is something I'd be interested in, I have Time Warner digital cable and they offer on demand services, but they are very bland, a couple good music videos, a couple comedy central shows, and a few other good things among a bunch of crap. No variety really, I'd love to have a service that offers just about everything that's on tv and the click of a button.

Nothing to do with Skype

This company is funded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, not by Skype. The Venice Project is as unrelated to Skype as Skype is to Kazaa.

Not Skype

This the Skype foundrs, Zennström and Friis using the money they made selling Skype to create a new service. Skype is a product of eBay, and eBay are not involved in this.

An interesting question is whether they will be using P2P filesharing techniques for video distribution the way they did for for VOIP with Skype. One thinks bittorrent and other types of swarming, but it seems more difficult to apply here (Bittorrent based protocols work by having people download different parts of the file, which is difficult to apply to a stream.)

Xbox 360 and iTunes untouchable

So far, of all these new "video on demand" services, the best are definitely iTunes and MS offerings on the Xbox 360. The former is great because they also incorporate free video from sites like Digital Life TV and Diggnation, and make it easy to move video to the iPod. The latter is great because they make it very easy to play video on your TV and because they are the only service offering true HD content.

If MS were to incorporate free content (sans DRM), offer MUCH larger hard drives for the 360 (120 GB+), and improve their interface (adding search capability, and RSS feed-like subscription option, etc. like iTunes) they would be the kings.

As it is, considering Sony's half-ass online support for the PSP and PS3, and their legendary obsession with locking-down everything they touch with near-criminal levels of DRM and similar restrictions, I don't even consider them as even being in the game. They're a joke, and they're going to stay that way even as their stagecoach plummets off the cliff.

-Eric

Re:Not sure XBox 360 will ever be the king

Most people also aren't interesting in watching TV shows and movies on their computer screens either. The big advantage of MS's service is that it connects right to your TV or HDTV. Apple may negate this advantage somewhat with their iTV box, but it would have to sell a lot of units to compare to the 360's already-substantial install base.

-Eric

well...

I have mixed feelings about this. Certainly moving TV services onto the Internet is generally a good thing - especially if it is easier for everyone to enter the market if their product is good enough.

However, since I live in a country (Germany) which has probably the worst TV I've ever seen anywhere (along with, by at least one order of magnitude, the worst Supermarkets on Earth - but that's a post for another day) I do not watch TV here at all, which has trained me to watch what I want, when I want - so long as it's already been released on DVD. I have neither time nor patience now to hang around to wait for a show I like to come on.

So rather than a new Internet TV station I really need a legal and free way of Video on Demand. I'm sure I'm not alone. There seems to be few details on what this new service is about, but I'm not sure how interested I'd be unless I have control of my viewing.

Also, my true concern would be that eBay is somewhere behind it. "Free" TV? Yeah, sure, but how really free and for how long?

SkypeTV

Well, if the guys that set up Skype and sold it for billions are going to have a go at the on-demand TV over IP market, then I'd bet on them. I've seen completely computer-illiterate people set up Skype and make calls.

The various teasing articles around the subject suggest they've got deals that mean they will have content from the mainstream as well as ads (and presumably whatever they can steal from YouTube). There's absolutely nothing on how they'll integrate ads and mainstream content, but the content is to be streamed so you'll have no choice about getting the ads if they go that way.

Nobody has said if there will be a requirement to pay for the service is the one thing that gets me, I can't decide whether to go chase the kids off my lawn or complain about how paying for cable TV was supposed to eliminate adverts.

Guys, when you set this up give users the option of making a micropayment for add-free TV shows.

And for those who go the extra mile and check the old slashdot story and its link to Business Week, this service was supposed to be up and running by the end of this year. Only 12 days to go people!

Even more adverts

I'm all for 'free' Internet TV but at the moment with 'free' broadcast TV, the length and frequency of adverts within programmes is really beginning to grate. The broadcasters are at least limited by regulation on the amount of advertising. I doubt the Internet will be regulated the same and we will have more ads than programme before long. Time to invent an ad skipping streamer.

Accounts and clients suck

Even assuming they fix the DRM issues and iTunes loses it's monopoly, I'm starting to get bummed about everyone wanting an account and client software to download a song that costs a buck.

It's bad enough that I need to have a user name and password every place I shop on line, and I can understand why newegg.com needs an address because they have to actually ship something, but why is the process still so tedious to download a single song? What happened to micro-payments?

The matter gets worse when they want you to install software to download. Not only do I need the iTunes client to download from Apple, but now I have to install a Yahoo client to download a non-DRM MP3, and I'll probably have to go into the registry to keep it from showing up in my "tray" at startup.

What will Sony and Skype want me to do? Who knows. But if they're trying to attract new customers, my advice would be to try and make it easier. At least Skype is likely to use PayPal, but if they don't make the download web-based, they might find it hard to convince me to install yet another "music manager" that I don't want or need. I have a Q and a Y in my tray. Someone somewhere is going to have to realize that this isn't a game of Scrabble and I really don't need to add two Ss.

TW

Sony's service EULA

Please press "Install the trojan/client, then press download to get your songs"...

Lots of functionally similar stores, all different

Arrgh.

I'm not _that_ unusual in having an iPod, a 360 and a PSP, am I? Deciding whether I want to buy my movie from one store, and not be able to play it on either of the other two devices is a bigger pain than buying a DVD and letting the PC do a bit of conversion work (or just sticking it in the machine in the case of the 360).

Finally!

This will be great, iTunes rivals at our fingertips! Slow news day, d/l an iTunes rival. Bored, d/l an iTunes rival. The big question is then, will it be possible to resell the iTunes rivals when they start to drag profits down in the red?

Service to be called...

iDemand

itunes subscription service would kill it

There's really no point to competing with apple, because if they get mad, they'll just do a subscription service on the ipod, and since their install base is already so large, they'd basically be pulling a microsoft and killing all the competition for at least several more years, even with zero additional innovation.

Competition is a good thing

(nt)

Re:Software from Sony???

Would you install software from Sony on your PC?

would you KNOW?

Re:Software from Sony???

Don't know.. depends on whether I can install it before it installs itself.